China Court

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Perhaps we should alter.’ Eustace is unperturbed. ‘Ask them for seven o’clock.’

  ‘But who can we ask with them?’

  ‘Not many, perhaps two or three couples.’

  ‘Two or three couples!’ Adza and Eliza look at one another.

  ‘Mr Preedy,’ says Eliza – Mr Preedy is still the present vicar – ‘but then Miss Preedy will have to come and she clacks her false teeth.’

  ‘I will ask Sir Philip Ware,’ says Eustace. ‘After all, he is our M.P.’

  ‘But won’t he be surprised?’

  ‘The Tunstalls,’ suggests Adza.

  ‘No, Mother!’

  ‘Mr Fitzgibbon,’ but even Adza is doubtful about that and Eliza confirms the doubt.

  ‘Mr Fitzgibbon and hear him eat his soup! We don’t know the sort of people who go out to dinner,’ says Eliza cuttingly.

  ‘There is no reason why we shouldn’t,’ says Eustace. ‘If we ask Sir Philip in the right way he will come. We are getting on, you know. The works are enlarging every year and Damaris’s marriage did us good. We don’t know what it will lead to,’ says Eustace with a glance at Anne. ‘It may change everything here and perhaps it’s time we began having dinner company,’ but there were other and burning questions.

  ‘Will Abbie be able to manage the waiting?’

  ‘I hope so. Sarah must help her.’

  ‘Sarah hasn’t a black dress.’

  ‘You must get her one, and what about us? Father will have to get some evening clothes.’

  ‘Nonsense. We shall tell them we don’t dress.’

  ‘The St Omers!’ and Eliza cries, ‘Better not to ask them at all.’

  In the end Eustace does go to Exeter and orders a set of tails, a watered-silk waistcoat – though he is a little doubtful about that – a shirt with its front panel discreetly frilled, a turned-up collar, and soft white bow tie. ‘You look splendid, Papa,’ says Eliza when they come home and he puts them all on to show them, pacing up and down the morning room as pleased as a small boy. ‘Splendid. But what about us?’ asks Eliza.

  ‘We have our dresses from Damaris’s wedding,’ says Adza.

  ‘Lady St Omer will recognize them.’

  ‘She must if she must and surely it’s no shame. It’s better than ostentation. We have only worn them once and Anne’s is so very pretty.’ Eliza agrees reluctantly, but Anne is silent.

  ‘And the food,’ says Adza. ‘What can I give them?’

  ‘What you give us,’ says Eustace. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  ‘But this is a dinner,’ and Adza goes to Household Management, but the very beginning dismays her: ‘It is usual now,’ says Household Management, ‘to precede the soup with little appetizers: caviar, oysters, crevettes …’ ‘Crevettes?’ asks Adza.

  They none of them know until Eliza looks it up in Larousse – she has guessed it to be French and, ‘I don’t trust prawns in May,’ says Adza promptly.

  ‘Of course, you can, Mother, if they say so.’ Eliza is impatient. ‘It is recipe twenty eighty-six. See what it says.’

  Adza looks it up and the bewilderment deepens. ‘Crevettes. These may be served with the heads stuck into a lemon, neatly and evenly, so that they make a pretty little dish.’ ‘How would you stick a prawn’s head into a lemon?’ asks Adza. ‘Lemons are hard, prawns are soft.’

  Eliza draws up a menu. As this dinner, they all know, is for Anne’s benefit, Eliza is obliging. ‘Come out of her books for once,’ says Adza, but, ‘Liz, dear, don’t,’ begs Anne.

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t encourage this dinner, for I won’t come,’ says Anne.

  ‘Of course you will come.’

  ‘I will not.’ Those three words, firmly spoken, are so unlike Anne that Eliza should have paid attention, ‘but she always did go bull-headed for an idea,’ says Polly and against her sister’s quick tongue Anne has no chance. Eliza throws herself into planning the dinner, food, wine, table decorations, and guests. Sir Philip accepts, ‘and with him and the Preedys it shouldn’t be too bad – though why Mother wants to ask the Tunstalls! Still,’ says Eliza, and it is not without hope that she copies out what seems to her the best menu from Household Management:

  Potage à la reine

  Fried soles

  melted butter

  Lobster cream

  Salmi of wild duck

  Fillet of beef

  Hare

  Snow eggs

  Marbled jelly

  Vegetables with beef

  Potatoes

  New peas …

  ‘Cook can’t make all that,’ says Adza.

  ‘She can if you are firm,’ and, ‘It’s all perfectly simple,’ Eliza tells Cook and reads her the recipe for the potage à la reine. Cook listens with an adamantine face.

  ‘Almonds in chicken zoup!’ she says when Eliza has finished, ‘I never heard tell o’t, and “rub through a tammy”. What’s a tammy, I should like to knaw? If you wants chicken zoup,’ says Cook dangerously, ‘I shall make me own.’

  Eliza has no more success with the salmi. ‘Wild duck?’ asks Cook scornfully. ‘Where will ’ee get that, Miss Eliza, to this time o’ year? Wild duck, my foot!’ says Cook, who does not mince words when she is angry, Miss Eliza or not.

  ‘If a salmi is too difficult—’ Adza tries to interpose.

  ‘Difficult, it’s ‘ash,’ says Cook with scorn after she has read the recipe. ‘Will ’ee give an ‘ash at a dinner party, m’m? It don’t ’ardly seem fitty. An’ I can’t do lobsters,’ says Cook, ‘I can’t bear to hear ’em scream so don’t ’ee ask me to.’

  ‘Why all this?’ asks Eustace when he hears. ‘Give them spring lamb and why not have asparagus? Ours should just be ready.’

  ‘We can’t have asparagus,’ says Eliza. ‘We have no asparagus tongs.’

  She sends to Truro, but there are no asparagus tongs there either. Adza has never heard of them, nor of grape scissors and other things Eliza says they must have, and, ‘Do you think we can ever teach Abbie to fold the dinner napkins properly?’ Eliza studies these in the chapter on ‘The Dinner Table’: there is the Fan, ‘and the Palm Leaf, the Sachet,’ says Eliza, ‘all perfectly simple,’ but Abbie’s hands are large and inclined to be hot and her Fan and Palm Leaf look bunched, while the Sachet gets grubby edges. ‘Better have them folded flat on the bread plates,’ says Adza.

  ‘But you don’t have bread plates at a dinner party.’

  ‘What do you do with your bread then?’

  ‘Crumble it on the tablecloth, I think.’

  ‘And the butter?’ Eustace is on the verge of being sarcastic, unbelievable for him, but these dinner-party discussions have gone on for days, ‘and all day,’ says Eustace. ‘And the butter?’

  ‘You don’t have butter.’

  ‘That would be a funny kind of meal. Of course we shall have butter.’

  ‘Then yours will be a funny kind of dinner party,’ says Eliza pertly.

  ‘We shall do as we have always done. They can take it or leave it.’

  ‘Then why ask the St Omers?’

  As the time grows near Adza lies awake at night with worry, Eliza is bright-eyed and avid and Eustace almost cross, for Adza keeps him awake too, while Cook has nerves over the marbled jelly. ‘Do we have to have this stuff every day?’ asks Eustace disgusted.

  ‘Hasn’t she to practise?’ asks Adza almost sharply.

  Sarah weeps and asks to be allowed to go back home to her mother because ‘Miss Eliza says I breathe so heavy when I serves.’ At that Adza snaps Eliza’s head off, Adza who never snaps. ‘You will please leave the servants alone,’ and all the while, quietly insistent, Anne says she will not come.

  ‘But I’m doing it for you,’ Eliza points out.

  ‘And I asked you not to.’ It is a rebuke, gentle, but decided. This is a new Anne, one whom Eliza has not met.

  ‘I have told you, Eliza, and you, Mother, I can’t meet Harry St Omer like this.’

 
; ‘There’s no harm in a dinner, my dear.’

  ‘There is an insinuation,’ says Anne.

  ‘Well, and why not?’ cries Eliza.

  ‘I don’t like him.’

  ‘Not like Harry St Omer!’ To Adza, Anne might almost as well have said she did not like God, but the answer comes back unbending. ‘I don’t like him. I don’t approve of his principles.’

  ‘He hasn’t any principles,’ says Eliza.

  ‘That is what I mean. I thought you, Father, did not approve of him either?’ but Eustace evades that question.

  ‘Oh, Anne, don’t be so narrow-minded!’ cried Eliza.

  ‘I am narrow-minded over this.’

  ‘It’s this chapel of yours.’

  ‘Certainly it’s the chapel. I will not meet him.’

  ‘Papa will make you,’ says Eliza cruelly.

  In spite of these worries, on the day of the dinner Eliza cannot help being elated; the St Omers, Sir Philip, are coming to China Court, the whole village knows it and, too, she is gratified by the look of the table. Under its central hanging lamp it gleams with silver and glass; fresh rolls are in the folded napkins – she has listened to Adza there. The cloth is plain damask, but Eliza has made an oval centre of golden-yellow velvet and on it put three miniature palms – palms grow well in Cornwall – the centre one a little higher than the others, each standing in moss with lilac flowers and ferns. On each side, between the palms, are tall white china vases holding yellow and mauve tulips, while in front of each place in a smaller matching vase – Eustace bought the set at a sale – is a single tulip and ferns. The menu cards are written in mauve and gold – Eliza sends to Exeter for the inks – and stand upon miniature easels that she has cut from cardboard and painted in gilt. As a final touch there are four pedestal white china fruit dishes of apples and grapes, yellow apples and purple grapes.

  The servants gather in the doorway to look; even Cook takes a moment from the kitchen. ‘Never seed nort like it,’ says Cook.

  ‘Could be the West End,’ says Abbie, who has once been to London but, ‘Eight bunches!’ Eustace explodes when he sees the grapes and, ‘I don’t like serving foreign fruit,’ says Adza, but Eliza has her way. ‘Cost two shillin’s a pound!’ says little Sarah. ‘Sixteen shillin’s for they!’ Sarah earns five shillings a week.

  The wine is set out. The maids are ready in their new aprons and caps, Sarah in her new black dress. Eliza goes upstairs to change.

  It is a typical moor May evening, chilly, with wind and rain – every windy rainy evening after Eliza is reminded of it, but now, as she goes upstairs, her mind is too busy to think of Anne; all her thoughts are still in the dining room, hovering over the table. ‘A work of art!’ She can almost hear Lady St Omer saying it, and she wonders if she ought to tell Abbie to light the fire. If I do she will build it up fit to roast an ox and some of us have to sit with our backs to it, she thinks. She is so preoccupied with this problem that it is only when she comes to the landing and sees her and Anne’s dresses hanging there ready, that she remembers that this dinner is for Anne.

  Now she comes to think of it, she has not seen Anne all afternoon. Anne might at least have come and looked, she thinks. After all, I did it all for her.

  ‘I asked you not to.’ That still sounds in her inner ear, but she shuts her mind to it. Anne will think differently when she sees the table, thinks Eliza, and when she sees herself dressed.

  Polly has ironed and freshened their dresses: Eliza’s plain olive-green faye seems inconspicuous by the Worth bridesmaid’s dress with its exquisite pale-blue silk, the overdress crenellated to match Damaris’s wedding dress and tied with the same cream silk cords. Polly has cut off the train, ‘though it’s small, it’s too much for a country dinner,’ and she has taken the cream, blue, and pink flowers from the hat and made them into a wreath. Eliza has never taken such pleasure in a dress since her own faraway salmon silk ball gown – and that was silly, says Eliza candidly now.

  She takes the pale-blue dress from its hanger and opens the White Room door. ‘I will help you first, Anne,’ she says generously and stops.

  In the middle of the floor is a small trunk, shut and strapped. On the trunk is a note, with her name in Anne’s firm writing. Eliza takes two dazed steps into the room, but it is empty.

  In one of the volumes of Dante that Tracy found in the White Room, was a tress of hair, long, and pale gold. It is Anne’s that she sends to Eliza before she sails: ‘I thought you might like to have this. I am cutting my hair short because of the lice.’

  ‘Lice!’ cries Adza recoiling but the letter goes on: ‘We have been warned we may get them in Szechuan.’

  ‘Anne, who couldn’t say “boo” to a goose!’ Eustace is dumbfounded. ‘Anne, going out to China as a missionary!’ he says over and over again.

  ‘A Baptist missionary!’ wails Adza. ‘Not even C.M.S.’

  ‘Well I am damned!’ says Eustace.

  ‘You might at least have warned Father and Mother,’ Eliza writes back.

  ‘They would have said “no,” and it is painful to argue.’ Anne’s second letter is quite clear, quite calm. Painful to argue! She has often sat by, often, while I … thinks Eliza. It seems to her deceitful and wounds her in a strange deep way that she cannot get over, though the end of the letter is warm: ‘Forgive me, Liz. You would if you knew how happy and useful I am,’ but ‘useful’ seems like another reproach. I shall never be of use to anyone, thinks Eliza. She does not feel forgiving; or unforgiving either; she feels only a dull empty ache.

  ‘You wasted a fortnight over those fallals,’ scolds Jeremy Baxter.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your sister knew better than that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Knew enough to leave without a word. ‘It is painful to argue.’ Anne is taking a training; soon she will be gone. ‘I shall never love anyone again,’ says Eliza and she wastes no more time but learns, reads, scrapes pennies into shillings, shillings into pounds, makes her pilgrimages to sales, and becomes avid.

  Though she has decided not to love anyone, when Eustace and later Jeremy Baxter die she is very much alone. She lives in the house, ostensibly with her brother and sister-in-law and her two young nephews, but in reality lives with nobody, except Polly, who still in a way understands. With the rest she is armed, shut as in a keep and, as the years go on, strange stories begin to be told about Miss Eliza Quin, ‘privately and publicly,’ says Jared with distaste.

  Eliza, in the inevitable brown cloak and bonnet that from being a shabby economy have become an eccentricity, is known now in the West Country, and recognized and respected by the dealers. At first she does not understand. ‘I was bid right out,’ she comes back from sale after sale and tells Jeremy Baxter; then, slowly, through Tarrant’s, she gets to know their ‘tricks’ as she calls them, a childish word for the ring, but she tries to avoid the big sales and, setting out even earlier, goes farther and into even more out-of-the-way places.

  It begins to be said in the village that she travels on a broomstick; no one is surprised because the village has long known she is a witch. Lights have been seen in the churchyard at night. Jim Neot saw her go into the steeple and a great white owl fly out. People have heard voices – ‘’Tis a witch.’

  As usual the talk comes down from the village into China Court and filters to Polly. ‘Miss Eliza is a witch. She talks in the churchyard. The butcher boy said so.’

  ‘Talks? Who to?’

  Polly catches the butcher boy and holds him. She is a good deal smaller than he is, but far fiercer. ‘Who does she talk to?’

  ‘I den knaw.’

  ‘You tell me, or else,’ says Polly shaking him.

  ‘I tell ’ee I den knaw.’

  ‘You tell me or I shall tell Mr Theobald you dropped those sweetbreads off the pony into the dust. He will make you pay for them! Miss Eliza talks to who?’

  ‘Daiders,’ says the butcher boy with a howl.

  ‘Daiders? Dead people? You go inside, m
iss,’ says Polly turning on a housemaid who has stolen up to listen. ‘You go in and don’t let me catch you hanging around here.’ She gives the butcher boy another shake. ‘You can’t talk to dead people.’

  ‘’Er does, ma’am. ’Er talks to th’ daid.’

  ‘Who heard her?’

  ‘Us ’ave all yurd ’er,’ and certainly the boy is tense with fear. ‘There’s lights up to th’ churchyard,’ he whispers, ‘and they says …’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘For ’er they baint daid. They gets up.’

  Polly watches and when, next time at dusk, Eliza puts on her outdoor things and quietly leaves the house, Polly follows her. She is still nimble, but the hill gives her a stitch – and I used to push them up it in that great pram – but she manages to keep near enough to Eliza to see what happens in the village street and, ‘My poor lamb!’ says Polly, ‘My poor lamb!’

  ‘You must listen to me. You must,’ says Polly to Lady Patrick. She knows Jared’s wife is the only person who can stir him and, ‘You listen,’ says Polly fiercely. She stands over Lady Patrick, knotting and unknotting her old hands in her apron, the tears streaming down her cheeks that are still pink, though they are wrinkled. ‘To think that Eliza – our Eliza! All the way up the street they were staring at her, children running out to twitch her cloak, nip her and run away, daring each other as if she was Old Nick hisself,’ says Polly. ‘Some of them made as if they would throw stones. Oh it was daredevil, just the big boys, but soon they will throw them. She took no notice, she went straight on up as if they wasn’t there, to the churchyard. It was pitch dark there and they dursen’t come, though they play there enough in the daytime.’

  The churchyard at night is dark, high, and remote above the village, with a soughing from the elms and the moor wind whistling in the grasses and around the headstones. Mr Preedy, long gone, has at that time no successor and for years the curate at Canverisk rides over to take a service on Sundays; the vicarage windows are nailed up, the churchyard wall of loose stones is nearly tumbled down, and there are nettles in the corners.

  ‘I could just see the stones and the crosses,’ says Polly. ‘But eh! it was eerie. There was a stone angel I nearly bumped into, I thought it was something walking, and I don’t like the churchyard smell. I know it’s only earth and wet stones, but it seems – and then there was a light, like they says.’